Profiles in Cowardice

Response to a Huffington Post Article of the same title by Robert Kuttner:

Although I am anything but a supporter of the trumpeter, to be fair, there are "principled" conservatives. I just happen to disagree with most of the "principles."  More disturbing, and what Kuttner dwells upon, is the "sell out" to the unprincipled candidacy of the trumpeter all in the name of "party unity" and to "stop Hillary."  One might understand the sell out were Hillary as malignant a force as the trumpeter, but she is not.  The so-called Benghazi affair is over-hyped conspiracy theory non-sense, no different in kind from the speculation that Bush engineered the 9/11 attacks.  Though I assume there are no huge revelations to come else they would have come already, the email scandal does not reflect well on her.  It likely could have been put to rest long ago were it not for an unfortunate tendency to tenaciously play out a bad hand.  Had she simply folded, pushed that pot to her opponent, and moved on to the next hand, it would continue to come up, but it would not be an "unfolding" story the way it has been.   

On the other hand, with the trumpeter, there is actual, incontrovertible evidence of an on-going malignancy that runs almost too deep for words.  The whole "business" of Trump University, for example, speaks to a tendency to "lie" blatantly for the purpose of self-aggrandizement and gain.  Even the name, Trump University, demonstrates the tendency to mislead for profit.  It is not a "university," not in any legitimate sense, and I could care less about a football team.  During my own tenure as a community college academic, colleagues at a sister institution spent five years amassing evidence sufficient to the sobriquet "university," which included expanding the range of their offerings to something approaching the universe of knowledge and improving the range and depth of a faculty actually qualified to pass on that knowledge.  It was no mean feat, and when the accreditation agency gave their approval, it was cause for celebration.   Trump University was predicated on the outset on "secret" knowledge from those in on the "secret," those faculty hand picked by the trumpeter himself, and "access" to the inner sanctum would cost you, a lot as it turns out.  Either the trumpeter lied when he claimed in advertisements to hand-pick the faculty or he lied under oath during the deposition when he denied knowing them, but one way or another he misled.   Even RedState.com has published an article titled "The Media are Letting Trump Get Away with Telling These Six Lies about Trump University."

So which is worse, which is the lesser of two evils, the email scandal or Trump University?  Both are potentially criminal, though Clinton's "criminality" hinges on technical issues that I doubt most could adequately explain.  The trumpeter's "criminality" is clearly visible to anyone who has paid more than they could afford for exaggerated claims. I doubt, however, that criminal charges will be brought in either case.  So which is worse?  It depends, I suppose, on who one wants to discredit, but there is considerable available evidence in support of the tag line that the Huff Post uses after every trumpeter story: "Donald Trump regular incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racit, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ball all Muslims -- 1.6 billion members of an entire religion -- from entering the U.S."   Hillary may be "crooked," but the trumpeter is twisted.   

Both issues, however, are red-herrings.  I believe we are witness in this election to the disintegration or re-alignment of the two party system that we have had now for about a half century.  The names will stay the same, Republican/Democrat, but the alignments that have made both parties "electable" on the national stage are coming apart into balkanized, irreconcilable "attitudes."  It's worse on the red side, so let me begin there.  In previous posts, I have suggested that the republican party has been comprised of three rather distinct strains -- the economic conservatives who favor "enhancements" of the existing status quo which clearly favor the already rich, the evangelical conservatives who favor hitting the resent button and reinstating the social mores of the 50s, and the neo-nationalists who favor a well armed militia in order to meet the threat of the alien other. The three strains overlap some and many are two out of three so to speak -- the disparagement of gays and the transgender appeal to both the evangelical and the neo-nationalist -- but the clear outlier is the economic conservative.  They need a broader base because few would vote for an economic policy that, if honestly described, would further enrich the already rich, entrench those riches across generations, and diminish any real opportunities for the upward mobility of the masses, including the working class whites.  

I will come back to the economic conservatives in a moment, but just a quick sketch of the neo-nationalist strain.  As his signature legacy of Lyndon Johnson, a democrat, signed the Voting Rights Act of of '64 and the Civil Rights Act of '65 and more or less ended Jim Crow, the de jure segregation that had been in place since reconstruction.   As with any action, there is a reaction, and many within the republican party, particularly Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon, saw it as an opportunity and began working within the disaffected to attract white conservative voters to the republican party.   As his campaign strategist, Kevin Phillips famously put it:

From now on, the Republicans are never going to get more than 10 to 20 percent of the Negro vote and they don't need any more than that.  The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That's where the votes are. Without that prodding from the blacks, the whites will backslide into their old comfortable arrangement with the local Democrats.

The so-called southern strategy, over the ensuing two decades, effectively flipped the racial alignments of the two parties.  The democrats, who put in place most of the Jim Crow laws during reconstruction, was now the party dismantling that same segregationist system.  Barry Goldwater, the most prominent of the hard core conservatives, began campaigning, not only on a strong states rights platform in opposition to the strong federal intervention of the voting and civil rights acts both of which interfered in the rights of private persons to discriminate and segregate within their place of business. This has its late echo, of course, in the Religious Freedom laws currently being passed throughout the south, laws repudiated by corporate America because they must operate in states and countries less favorable to such overt legal discrimination, but the Goldwater and later the Nixon campaigns marked the beginning of the so-called "dog whistle" style of republican politics.  Again, as Lee Atwater famously put it:

You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger." By 1968 you can't say "nigger" — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me — because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "Nigger, nigger."

The issue of "cutting taxes," for example, might be supported on abstract economic considerations, but the cuts were justified, in part, by proportionate cut backs on "food stamps" and other programs that were believed to benefit the black urban voter at the expense of the white suburban and rural voter.  Such cut backs would, in effect, re-instate old patterns of of white privilege and economic segregation, but the real purpose was to create investment capital and the jobs that followed. The issue of "federal overreach," as another example, might be supported on abstract philosophic considerations, but scaling back federal interventions like "affirmative action" and "equal employment opportunity" meant, in effect, re-instating old patterns of white privilege and economic segregation.  The "purpose" of conservative positions was not overtly segregationist, was not overtly oppressive of minority populations, per se, but the "byproduct" is that "blacks get hurt worse than whites." For those that heard the dog-whistle that was just fine.  

The trumpeter, of course, is smart enough to avoid "nigger, nigger, nigger," but he has tooted overtly at Mexicans and Muslims, job thieves and terrorists.  Whether the trumpeter is or is not actually racist, one might never know, but he has earned points with the racist crowd for NOT engaging in dog-whistle politics, aka "political correctness," for just saying what they had been thinking all along.  Much of the conservative reaction to his more overtly racist and xenophobic language is a reaction to his self-serving failure to play the established "game."   One should find the right pitch, so to speak.  Blow the dog whistle loud enough to be heard, but not so loudly as to be condemned as a racist, because, after all, the "purpose" of cutting taxes, particularly on the wealthy, has really nothing to do with race, more to do with the consolidation, protection, and heritability of wealth.  The "purpose" of scaling back federal interventions, particularly in the arena of finance and environment, has really nothing to do with "states rights" or race, more to do with the unfettered expansion of wealth.  One blew the dog-whistle loudly enough to keep blood hounds and pit bulls barking in the fold, but not so loudly that it drew attention to itself for the wrong reasons.  The dog-whistle, in short, called in the basest part of the new conservative base and fed them  racially motivated by-products.  

As a primary strategy, the trumpeter succeeded in stripping away the neo-nationalist conservatives, those who responded to "dog whistle."   If he is to create party unity, he must bring the "economic conservatives" into the fold.  There are "principled" conservatives, who cannot bring themselves to support the trumpeter and his overtly, text-book definition, racist language and positioning. I would encourage readers of the HuffPost to read the post "David French Annouces his Final Decision on his Presidential Run" at www.redstate.com. They quote him as saying:

we live in a time when patriots are mocked and demagogues celebrated. Even good men have reduced themselves to excusing the inexcusable and defending the indefensible. Last week, Reince Priebus said that those involved in the independent effort were “embarrassing themselves.” But what is more embarrassing? Is it doing your best to defend the nation you love from two people who are unworthy of its highest office? Or is it using your God-given gifts and talents to advance the interests of a man who cares only for himself and who rejects the very values you’ve long claimed to uphold? As I’ve written many times before, nations are built on virtue — and courage is indispensable. But there is also prudence, and it was simply not prudent for me to take on this task. I remain against Trump and against Hillary, but I will do all I can where I am.
 
Prudence, of course, can be interpreted as a form of cowardice.  Although he promises to do "all I can where I am," that seems to be a pious, Pontius Pilate washing and wringing of the hands.  One is reminded of aphorism, "all it takes for evil to prosper is for good men to do nothing," and it seems French will be doing next to nothing. There are many economic conservatives who perhaps are betting that the billionaire trumpeter is closeted, is really "one of them" and will come out of the closet when elected and support the republican economic platform -- a platform focused, for example, on cutting those taxes supporting social welfare programs, in part because there may well be a sincere belief in the moral benefits of "work," in part because we most definitely WOULDN'T want to cut the larger expenditures on the military or scale back on our presence abroad.  Why?  In a multi-national, global economy, buttressed by "trade deals," the US military serves as a global police force maintaining sufficient stability to insure the protection of wealth.  In the pre-Reagan era, that meant containing communism and protecting European markets.  In the post-Reagan era, that meant containing regional tribalism (particularly the religious varieties found in the middle east that, until recently, threatened global oil supplies) and the re-alignment of the labor market away from the union dominated US toward China, Mexico, Vietnam, et cetera.  Over simplified, but Chomskian paranoia aside, our policies have always been, on the face of it, America First, if America is General Electric.  The trumpeter, however, has already called into question the intricate web of alliances, to include non-proliferation treaties, that facilitate the US in its role as the global police force.  What to do but hope that he didn't mean it?  

The southern strategy, however, was a faustian bargain.  Once you call the blood hounds and pit bulls to your assistance because you need their votes, it is difficult to "un-call" them, and they may chase you up a tree. The trumpeter has aligned himself with and stripped away the neo-nationalist strain of the republican base, who actually believe we should engage in some form of racial and ethnic cleansing, who actually believe we should "build a wall" and arm ourselves to protect it, but in doing so, he has chased the economic conservatives, the principled conservatives, who have a broad interest in global relations and do not share in his expressed xenophobia, who have a broad interest in their class issues and do not share in his expressed racism, up a tree.  It is an embarrassing and uncomfortable position, particularly when it is, ostensibly, a member of your own party that has chased you up a tree. What to do?